


To What End

by niuserre



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:04:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niuserre/pseuds/niuserre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kara wants an end to things, whatever that might be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To What End

Today, it's the sunlight that wakes her. The morning light streams through the blinds, illuminating the sofa that she's fallen asleep on yet again. There's no warmth from the rays that bathe her in yellow and reflect off her increasingly long blonde mop of hair. Leoben is watching her from the dining table, two plates of pancakes laid out and a spoon for her to eat her's with.

As if she couldn't kill him with a spoon.

"Good morning, Kara." A smile tilts the corners of his day-old body but doesn't reach his eyes. He gestures that she should join him at the table, his gaze lingering on the spoon just long enough that Starbuck knows he's aware of the danger.

It's becoming a game.

She lets her head fall back with a sigh before she rocks forward and up onto her feet. She rubs at her nose with one hand, pulling the chair out with the other and dropping onto it with neither grace nor effort, feet together, knees apart, never the lady. He's still sort of smiling as she picks up the spoon and begins to eat, concentrating only on shovelling the sweet pancakes into her mouth and avoiding his eyes.

"I got you some paints," He says eventually and Kara turns her expressionless face to see the box on the coffee table, a paintbrush jutting up from it. The handle is pointed, long enough that she could get a decent grip on it. She imagines herself forcing it through his neck, hearing the familiar gasp - that look of surprise that never seems to change no matter how many times she kills him. She thinks she'd dip the bristles in his blood afterwards and paint circles on the walls. "Don't make me take it away." He adds, watching her face, noting every twitch of her muscles.

"Resurrection must be fun." She says with a glint in her eye, "Unless you've got more of a death wish than me."

"I want to trust you, Kara. Relationships are built on trust."

She looks away before looking back at him, her head to one side and her usual half-smile, half-smirk, daring him to push it further. She twirls the spoon between her fingers, hardly aware that she's doing it but knowing that he's tensed and ready. She moves suddenly, pushing up from the chair and making him flinch but with the desired effect achieved, she sits back down and continues to eat. "Trust, huh?" She says through a mouthful of pancake. "You mean like we trusted the cylons to keep the truce? Or like the Admiral trusted Boomer? Yeah, you toasters know all about frakking trust."

Leoben smirks, like he's above having to defend himself or his species, which only pisses Starbuck off and starts her twirling the spoon again. He reaches for her plate and she grabs his wrist, "You won't break me you sonofabitch." She says through gritted teeth. They sit there, staring at one another for a moment till she releases his arm and he pulls the plate away, clearing the table with his usual meticulous manner of operating. She watches him, like she always does, until he goes to the stairs.

“Where are you going?” She asks, and hates the way it makes her sound like she cares but honestly, she does care. She hates being stuck alone in this frakking prison dressed up for playing house, even having to deal with Leoben’s constant talk of their destiny is better than that.

“I have things to do.” He replies vaguely, pulling on his jacket.

“Will you be long?” She demands, shaking her head at herself for asking and banging her clenched fist on the table. That makes him smile.

“I’ll bring lunch.” And then he’s up the stairs and gone, Starbuck considers making a dash for the door to try and take him down whilst it’s open but the paint box catches her eye and she goes to look through it with a sigh.

Blue, red and yellow. She’ll ask him for black and white later, maybe. But for now she lays them out and squeezes a blob from each onto the table. She’d ignore them completely, to annoy him, but it’s not like she has anything better to do. Housework isn’t exactly her thing.

She paints the sun on the wall, the yellow running down slightly forcing her to make it bigger. She stares at it for a while, thinking about Sam, about Galactica, even about her mother. But that jars her out of her reverie and she goes to the kitchen, running the tap, filling a glass and taking a sip before returning to her painting. At least the cylons have managed running water.

She dips the brush in the water, watching the yellow swirl out till it’s all tinged with yellow. She drags the bristles over the edge, the water dripping off them and then dries them a little more on her shirt.

She paints a ring of red around the sun. It almost looks like home here now, except for the mess and she misses the smell of stale pizza and cigar smoke. By the time Leoben gets back, the familiar pattern of concentric circles, the one she’s always painted, graces the wall. Beside it, she’s painted candles, starkly yellow with orange flames that almost flicker. If you turn your head just right.

“You have paint in your hair,” He says, reaching to stroke the tendrils back from her face. She lets him; her arms limp by her sides, the paintbrush an extension of her fingers. His hand moves to her neck and she can’t help but push into it, wishing it was Sam but just grateful for the contact. She closes her eyes and tries to wish herself away, alternating between blocking out the feel of his skin against hers and just pretending it’s someone else.

He stops, and she wishes he hadn’t, balks at the thought of it and turns away from him so he can’t see her eyes. Sometimes she wishes he’d force her. Rape her. So she could hate him and be done with it but he wants her to have him willingly, a traitorous voice in the back of her mind says that one day she will.

She looks forward to that day. She can’t help it; somehow the thought of giving in appeals. To stop fighting, to just be at the end of wherever this deranged frakking journey is taking her so that’s it’s over and she’s done. Locked in this apartment, any end will do but of course, that’s what he wants. She wonders what he’d do, if he knew that’s what she wanted too. If he knew that she wanted him to grind her down, to win. Would he push harder? Would it work?

She goes to the window and looks out, her mind whirring with thoughts she doesn't want to be thinking. He stands behind her; a hand rested on her hip and presses his forehead to her shoulder.

She imagines it’s Sam. Lee. Gaius. Anyone. And then her imagination places Leoben there once more, making her shiver. She’s dreamed of frakking him. Dreamed of scraping her nails down his back as he moves inside her. Sometimes they’re nightmares, but mostly they’re not. 

It’s living it that’s the nightmare; in dreams she doesn't care.


End file.
